Bizarre, Yet Perhaps Practical Ideas For Dealing With Manbearpig — If He Ever Shows Up

by John Hawkins | June 27, 2006 10:54 am

Despite all the global warming hysteria that people on the left try to whip up, there is one major problem that gets very little attention: even if you believe global warming exists and that man is causing it, there is no practical solution to the problem.

Even most of the hard core “true believer” environmentalists who think global warming will turn the earth into a “burning ring of fire” in a hundred years admit that all the Kyoto Treaty would accomplish is to give us a few more years.

Technologically, there are a few practical things we can do to cut emissions, like building nuclear power plants, but there’s no immediately apparent technological solution on the horizon.

That’s why some of the more exotic ideas about how to fight global warming should be studied, just in case they’re needed. For example[1]:

“In the past few decades, a handful of scientists have come up with big, futuristic ways to fight global warming: Build sunshades in orbit to cool the planet. Tinker with clouds to make them reflect more sunlight back into space. Trick oceans into soaking up more heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

Their proposals were relegated to the fringes of climate science. Few journals would publish them. Few government agencies would pay for feasibility studies. Environmentalists and mainstream scientists said the focus should be on reducing greenhouse gases and preventing global warming in the first place.

But now, in a major reversal, some of the world’s most prominent scientists say the proposals deserve a serious look because of growing concerns about global warming.

…The plans and proposed studies are part of a controversial field known as geoengineering, which means rearranging the earth’s environment on a large scale to suit human needs and promote habitability. Dr. Cicerone, an atmospheric chemist, will detail his arguments in favor of geoengineering studies in the August issue of the journal Climatic Change.”

Granted, some of these ideas may sound wacky at first listen, but they also seem a lot more practical than stopping the whole of mankind from producing massive amounts of greenhouse gasses. But will they ever be needed at all? Maybe, maybe not.

Quite frankly, given mankind’s very limited understanding of how our climate works, I don’t believe anyone who says he can predict what the weather or global temperature will be 20 years from now, much less a hundred years in the future. Still, it’s never a bad idea to be prepared — and given all the money we’re spending on global warming research, if we were to spend a few million on research to determine how feasible some of these geoengineering proposals might be, that would be money well spent in my opinion.

Endnotes:

For example: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/27/science/earth/27cool.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5065&en=ca9e39a26d7e4ece&ex=1151985600&partner=MYWAY